Women Flying Through Glass Ceilings

In 1992, Karen Feaster, a recent Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University graduate, heard the former director of the Daytona Beach International Airport speak on the radio, and being so moved by his words wrote him a letter expressing her inspiration for wanting to follow in his footsteps. He replied by offering her an unpaid internship, where she became an airport operations volunteer.  

Throughout the years she gained more and more responsibility which came with titles like: director of properties and finance, director of administration and grants, director of airport services, and for the last five years she has served as deputy airport director under the direction of the county’s director of aviation and economic resources, Rick Karl.

Karen Feaster, 52, Director of the Daytona International Airport

Feaster has been directly responsible for virtually every aspect of airport management, such as leases and land development, airport passenger facility charges, accounts receivables and payables, budget and accounting, and even projects and grants. In the past 10 years alone, Feaster has managed more than $90 million in grant-funded airport projects and also has been instrumental in overseeing the design and construction of the $14 million terminal renovation project that’s currently underway. 

Due to her skillset and Karl’s increasing responsibilities with economic development, this past Tuesday, County Manager George Recktenwald selected Karen Feaster to the top post as the airport director. 

“You couldn’t work your way up any farther than the way Karen has done it,” said Recktenwald.

For his part, Karl said much of the airport’s success over the past decade has been the result of Feaster’s efforts.

“This is something that Karen has earned,” said Karl. “Everything that we’ve done over the past 10 years, all the successes, she has been largely responsible for.”

She is the first woman to ever be in that position at Daytona. According to a workforce report, women in the aviation industry in general are seriously underrepresented and only in the past two decades has the industry seen growth in their female executives.  About 17% percent of all accredited airport executives are women.

Michelle Anthony, 51, Airport Director at Conway Municipal.

The year was 2010, and Michelle Anthony held no college education and had just become a single  mother of a 9 year old girl. Moving back to where she grew up, Lawrence County, Arkansas, she followed her cousin’s advice and asked the director at the Walnut Ridge Regional Airport about an administrative position. 

The former director, Mitch Whitmire, gave her a chance although expressing that he did not think she was up for the challenge. The job to her surprise turned out to be fueling rather than administration. 

Since then, she has kept learning the ins and outs of the aviation industry, and in 2016, she became the first female director at the Dexter B. Florence Memorial Field in Arkadelphia. Under her leadership, the airport was designated the 2017 Arkansas Airport of the Year among the other 91 airports that are in the state. The same year the City of Conway offered her a position to be their airport director, but she had to decline since she wanted to make sure her daughter graduated high school first. 

She became the first female airport director at Conway in 2019 after being selected among 24 applicants.   As director, she strengthened safety standards, created wildlife management programs, and helped expand Conway Municipal Airport to meet the growing needs of the city.

When she was 30 years old, Teara Fraser, took a small plane aerial tour of the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Two weeks later, she went skydiving in Namibia. These experiences changed her life. Having such close encounters with pilots and all the instruments on the planes she became fascinated and knew she had to become a pilot. 

Teara Fraser, 49, Founder and CEO of Iskwew Air

The organizing committee that was bidding for the 2008 Olympics to be held in Vancouver was struggling figuring out how to get travelers to the more remote areas of the British Columbia so that the travelers could have a more authentic experience of Canada. This sparked her idea to start her own airline, as she herself grew up in one of those communities and recognizes the importance of air travel, often being the only mode of transportation for long periods of time due to icy weather conditions. 

At 47, with just one aircraft, she became the first indigenous woman in Canada to start her own airline, Iskew Air, which in Cree means “woman.” 

She was awarded the top 100 of Canada’s most powerful women by the Women’s Executive Network in 2019. 

Today she provides air travel for tourists and indigenous communities, as well as being a distribution source bringing in goods to remote areas. During the coronavirus pandemic, she has partnered with LIFT Collective, starting a fundraiser to support delivering essential goods to remote indigenous communities all along the west coast of the British Columbia.